Introducing the XPoNential Puzzle: Your clues to this year’s festival lineup

Next week we’ll officially make the announcement that XPN listeners look forward to every spring –  though perhaps “look forward to” is an understatement. “Eagerly anticipate?” “Buzz about?” “Are super anxious to hear?” Of course the excitement I’m talking about here is the excitement over our annual XPoNential Music Festival, and there’s never a shortage of uber-fans pondering who we might announce, suggesting who we should announce – even meticulously plotting the tour routing of their favorite bands to see if they’ll fall in the lineup.

So this year, for those die-hards, we’re offering a bit of an unofficial heads up about XPo Fest. The inaugural XPoNential Puzzle begins today and runs through Monday, giving you daily clues about some of the artists who will appear on the Camden Waterfront this year. All you need to do is make sure you’re tuned in to our Facebook page and our Twitter channel, where you’ll find clues at 11:30 a.m. and 4:30 p.m. Here’s how it will work.

We’re super visual people here, and big fans of album art – so we decided to make album covers the theme for the inaugural XPoNential Puzzle. What we’ll do is reveal a piece of the most recent album cover for each band we announce. So, for example – we know already that Philly’s Dr. Dog is appearing at the Susquehanna Bank Center at Saturday night of the festival. Below, you’ll recognize the cover of their most recent LP, Be the Void. So, for Dr. Dog, your XPoNential Puzzle clue would look like this:

Pretty easy, right? Maybe. For some of these, we totally expect that astute XPN listeners will guess them without much difficulty. For others, we’ll be dang surprised if you have any idea what album cover it is – even though you’ll probably kick yourself when you find out. In any case, we encourage you to check in on Twitter and on Facebook, leave your guesses, hypothesize – maybe work together in teams in some way to decode the puzzle – and look for the “real” announcement of the lineup next Tuesday, April 16th at 9 a.m. on the XPN Morning Show!